Tag Archives: art

Fifty years since Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ – to the day!

Ladies and gents!

Today’s topic is going to be unexpected and a little out of the ordinary…

I know this won’t be of much interest to all my dear readers, but for some of you, it might bring on a wave of nostalgia – and maybe even a tear to a wrinkled (or, on the contrary, smooth and soft) cheek.

Here’s the thing: today marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the album Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd!

 // Photo by Jim Geuther, from here.

But first, here’s my “view from the Soviet Union” regarding this classic album and the era in which it was released…

Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, foreign vinyl records on the black market would run you a hundred rubles or more – which, for perspective, was around a month’s salary for an engineer! So a record back then was pure, rare luxury. Music lovers would borrow them from their lucky friends – or rent them for a handful of rubles from acquaintances – to make reel-to-reel tape copies of them. And Pink Floyd records were especially prized. When I was in ninth or tenth grade at the math and physics school of Moscow State University, I got my hands on some such records and tapes. And Wish You Were Here is one I remember most. Still to this day I consider this musical masterpiece (and I’m not afraid to call it that) to be one of my favorite albums of all time.

Also, back in school, I learned English by listening to Pink Floyd (also The Beatles), since in lessons we were taught either German or “mathematical” English – which is a whole other story :-). Still, even today there are turns of phrase in their lyrics that I still can’t grasp – including lines from this album. For example: “you wore out your welcome with random precision”. I guess that’s something flowery about how Syd Barrett (see below) drove everyone to their limits. Or is it? Maybe muzo-philologists could explain it better?!

Anyway. If you listened to this masterpiece a long time ago but may have forgotten about it – go and refresh your memory. Or, if you’ve never heard of it – give it a shot: you might be surprised. There’s a real chance you’ll love it. I know folks who’ve discovered Pink Floyd as adults and love the band just as much as those who got into them in their youth…

Now, a few words about why this is a masterpiece – and why, curiously, it’s still relevant today…

First, there’s the album’s theme: Wish You Were Here is dedicated to the band’s former front man, Syd Barrett – a genius experimenter who, alas, lost his grip on reality not long after Pink Floyd made it big due to drugs causing a nervous breakdown. The album cover, with its handshake and the man on fire, has become almost a symbol for “burnout” – something widely discussed today; for, alas, mental health issues have hardly lessened over the last half-century (and instead seem to have only gotten worse).

Second, it’s a protest against the alienation and cynicism of the music industry (and really of everything else too). Welcome to the Machine is about a system that chews people up. And it feels like in the past 50 years, this “machine” has only gotten worse. So, if you ever get annoyed by the homogenous stream of today’s music, go have a listen to Wish You Were Here: an album with zero bowing to labels, trends, or recommendation algorithms. If Roger, David, Richard and Nick fancied doing eight minutes of melancholy instrumental – that’s what they recorded. And the result: awesome!

And finally, third: if you miss someone, or want to be with them but just can’t, the album Wish You Were Here (especially the eponymous track) is simply a waterfall of missing-you emotions.

So, come on – check it out! And happy anniversary – 50 years today! – to this legendary… musical monument. This album, especially on this day, needs to be celebrated – and listened to!…

Just a name (rented!) – for half a billion dollars!

If you’re not in the know, the words Louvre and Abu Dhabi might seem incongruent. But it turns out there’s an art museum in the latter that’s renting just the name Louvre off the famous Paris museum for 40 years (2007–2047) for US$500,000! What?! Just goes to show: never underestimate the value of a brand name!

Sure, I was curious – and in town. So of course – we just had to get ourselves over to the Louvre Abu Dhabi!…

Read on…

Goodbye, Dunhuang! Hello, Zhangye! But not so fast…

Farewell, Dunhuang! It was fun and educational, but we were back on the road – sticking to our planned China-2024 trip route. Today, nearly 600 kilometers getting to Zhangye; accordingly we were up early and off we popped…

The road wasn’t the most exciting – made worse by gloomy clouds and drizzle. Still, a couple of things along the way made us stop and click away with our cameras. Like this large sculpture in the middle of the desert:

Read on…

Netsuke at the Hermitage – a new exhibition of this Japanese heritage!

Hi folks!

Earlier this week I took a whirlwind trip up to St. Petersburg; however – I did not go on a walkabout around this particularly beautiful city. What?…

Sure, I normally get out and about in St. Pete, but that’s because I tend to go there during the summer months – or at least in spring or fall; rarely in the depths of winter. But I’m no fan of bad, wintry weather – all gray and damp and the days being real short. So, like I say – no walkies. But we had something else planned – indoors: a visit to the Hermitage! ->

First up: see these pics? All as per (historically significant, beautiful, intricate, grandiose, opulent…) – right? But there’s one thing missing; can you guess what?…

Come on… worked it out yet?

Read on…

The best conference venue I’ve ever seen – then checking out the Saudi digital/AI-art scene.

Salam, folks – from Saudi Arabia!

I was there last week at the Internet Governance Forum in Riyadh, where I was invited to give a speech about some of the lesser-known evils of the internet – and about our ideas regarding what to do to best tackle those evils. Traditionally, this annual forum has been attended by politicians and other government officials, representatives of international organizations, and so on. Only relatively recently have they started inviting folks from commercial companies – seemingly so as to get a better handle on the home truths about what’s really going on across the internet.

Since the event wasn’t dedicated to my core field (JIC: cybersecurity!), I didn’t stay around to listen to the other speeches. Thus, that’s all for today about the actual conference! However, I just have to tell you about the place where the event took place…

The forum took place in the enormous… palace (I can’t describe the building any other way) called the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center. And it seems it’s so luxuriously-exclusively grand and ritzy that there’s hardly anything about the place on the internet (e.g., no Wikipedia page) – yes, that same internet the governance of which the forum is dedicated to! Here’s how it looks from the outside:

Inside – breathtakingly beautiful opulence; here, for example, is the entrance hall:

The main hall:

Like? Then let’s take a closer look…

Read on…

Paris in November.

Au revoir Algeria; bonjour France!…

Next up on my brief Africo-Euro November business-trip: Paris.

The Paris segment was busy on the work front: new acquaintances, meetings, negotiations – all as per. However – also as per – I just had to get some tourisms in: after all, this was Paris, no less. But, as luck would have it – the weather spoiled those plans somewhat: there was snow (in November!), it was windy, and it was freezing (in November?!). And this was Paris – not Kamchatka!!…

Looking out the window of my hotel room, there was no way I fancied venturing out given such murky, windy, cold and wet weather. Yes, we were in Paris – a European center of mindless mass tourism, but on a snowy November day there was absolutely nothing to be done!…

Snow in Paris in the fall. What?! :0)

Read on…

Mind blown – at TeamLab Planets in Tokyo.

My next tale from the Japanese side is one of astonishment.

It’s not too often you see me astonished. But it does happen occasionally. It happened on the Kolyma Highway in Siberia – and not due to the extreme cold itself but its extraordinary bleaching effect on the surrounding landscapes. There was astonishment at the beauty to behold on the roads of Namibia. There was the way the company pulled through the covid pandemic. There was our vacation to the Galapagos Islands (pdf – 25MB). All these and more…

My latest astonishment came while visiting Tokyo’s TeamLab art-collective’s light-and-sound installations, which this post is all about.

Basically, it’s unbelievably cool. It all lasts just an hour-and-a-half, but the journey you take there through different halls digitally painted in the most insanely grandiose way – it’s, well… astonishing…

There are hanging strings of light that change color constantly ->

Read on…

The cherry on the icing on the cake: ballet. (A fine finish to a mad May!)

Looking back over my travels during the month of May, I’m rather pleased: not bad at all for one calendar month. I visited three countries visited – Thailand, the Philippines (for the first time – country No. 105), and the Dominican Republic, and several cities therein-among: here’s my route in full:

Moscow > Thailand (Phuket) > the Philippines (El Nido, Mayon, Manila) > Moscow > Nizhny Novgorod > Moscow > the Dominican Republic (Punta Cana) > Moscow.

Fourteen flights, and 67 hours up in the air in planes and seven in a helicopter.

Along the way – four conferences/exhibitions of varying scale; talks at universities; interviews; and assorted other business. But the cherry on the cake for this super-busy May came on its last day back in Moscow – to see a ballet at the Bolshoi Theater…

Once a year, we get to bring together a small group of representatives of our dearest clients for a backstage buffet reception, followed by seeing a performance. And the seats we get come in different places – including in the Central Box! These photos were taken from there:

The ballet was La Bayadère:

Read on…